A) Hilarious? B) Tragic? C) Who gives a flying fuck anymore? D) All of the above.

The saddest thing about the whole debt ceiling spectacle is that the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House during the worst economic downtown since the Depression and we’re actually hearing talk about the death of Keynesian economics? Unfuckingbelievable, but there you go.

Bruce Bartlett writing at The Fiscal Times wonders if Barack Obama is “the Democrats’ Richard Nixon?” He makes some good points

By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.

And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.

Thus Obama took office under roughly the same political and economic circumstances that Nixon did in 1968 except in a mirror opposite way. Instead of being forced to manage a slew of new liberal spending programs, as Nixon did, Obama had to cope with a revenue structure that had been decimated by Republicans.

Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.

Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:

His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.

Further evidence can be found in the writings of outspoken liberals such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has condemned Obama’s conservatism ever since he took office.

I’m with Krugman myself. I simply can’t believe Obama is negotiating with these assholes (see below) and losing! It’s incredible to watch.

What would Obama do in a fist fight, you know? He should have told the House GOP to do their worst but that he’d veto anything too aggressive and make sure the bills were paid under the 14th Amendment. He should have started there!

Then what would have happened?

It would have been a different story altogether. He should have listened to Bill Clinton.